Month: August 2018

Vacant Property Theory

Broken-windows theory always worked better as an idea than as a description of the real world. The problems with the theory, which include the fact that perceptions of disorder generally have more to do with the racial composition of a neighborhood than with the number of broken windows or amount of graffiti in the area, are numerous and well documented. But more interesting than the theory’s flaws is the way that it was framed and interpreted. Consider the authors’ famous evocation of how disorder begins: A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers. Things get worse from there. But what’s curious is how the first 2 steps of this cycle—“A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up”—have disappeared in the public imagination. The 3rd step—“a window is smashed”—inspired the article’s catchy title and took center stage. Debates about the theory ignored the 2 problems at the root of its story, jumping straight to the criminal behavior. We got “broken windows,” not “abandoned property,” and a very different policy response ensued. But what if the authors—and the policymakers who heeded them—had taken another tack? What if vacant property had received the attention that, for 30 years, was instead showered on petty criminals?

Legal Nomads

Early stories below are mostly about travel, since the food part really came in later. It wasn’t until I got to China and then Southeast Asia that food became the thing that led me from place to place, learning as much as I could. I’ve written before how friends from law school find my food obsession laughable because then I just didn’t really pay attention to what I was eating. My name is Jodi, and I am a former careless eater.

Paul Singer

Cohn, Bush soon discovered, was the 37-year-old protégé of Paul Singer, the founder of Elliott Management and one of the most powerful, and most unyielding, investors in the world. Singer, who is 73, with a trim white beard and oval spectacles, is deeply involved in everything Elliott does. The firm has many kinds of investments, but Singer is best known as an “activist” investor, using his fund’s resources—about $35B—to buy stock in companies in which it detects weaknesses. Elliott then pressures the company to make changes to its business, with the goal of improving the stock price. Most of their investment campaigns proceed without significant conflict, but a noticeable number seem to end up mired in drama. A signature Elliott tactic is the release of a letter harshly criticizing the target company’s CEO, which is often followed by the executive’s resignation or the sale of the company. 1 of Singer’s few unsuccessful campaigns, to block a merger within Samsung, eventually led to the impeachment and imprisonment of the South Korean President after Singer’s opponents became so desperate to fend off his attack that they allegedly began bribing government officials. From the outside, it can seem as if Elliott is causing the drama, but the firm argues that it simply identifies preëxisting problems and acts as a check on the system.

Optimal standing around

Robots, take note: When working in tight, crowded spaces, fire ants know how to avoid too many cooks in the kitchen. Observations of fire ants digging an underground nest reveal that a few industrious ants do most of the work while others dawdle. Computer simulations confirm that, while this strategy may not be the fairest, it is the most efficient because it helps reduce overcrowding in tunnels that would gum up the works.

the construction industry figured this out long ago.

Sabercat extinction

Sabercat extinction has been understood in terms of top-down ecological stress, a victim of ‘trophic cascade’, just as the top predators of the ocean today are dying off because populations of prey fishes are collapsing beneath them. The plight of today’s big cats also seems to echo the downfall of Smilodon: we know that leopards, tigers, jaguars and other big cats require large swathes of habitat that are connected through ecological corridors, providing them with plenty of ground to stalk, and enough prey to survive. Decrease the habitat and food supply, and the cats suffer. But what if we could trace the clues back the other way? What if the extinction of Smilodon could help us understand what wiped out so many of the species it relied upon for food? New research on this question could help us untangle the frighteningly mysterious nature of extinction — in the past and future — itself. For now, the exact reason why Smilodon disappeared remains unknown. Loss of food is a likely cause, but that answer only moves the question a step back to why Smilodon’s prey died out. The sabercat was a casualty in a wider extinction at the end of the Pleistocene that marked the end of the Ice Age and the beginning of a world over which our species has disproportionate influence. Some researchers like to call this the Anthropocene, but whether or not such a designation truly fits depends on how long our species lasts. What might the fossil record look like 100m years from now? The Pleistocene extinction could come to shade into the modern biodiversity crisis with little or no break in between. The close of the Ice Age might have been the beginning of a new age, or it could have been one dramatic blip in an ongoing mass extinction, tracking the rise of human dominance. Some of the garbage that ends up preserved in La Brea’s asphalt might help future archaeologists untangle this mystery.

Kung fu explainer

Many directors and actors have been associated with the kung fu genre, Hong Kong cinema’s most unique creation, but no one compares to Lau Kar-leung (1937–2013) as a purist of the genre and the kung fu form. Associate curator La Frances Hui explores the history of the kung fu films, the actors and filmmakers associated with the genre like Bruce Lee, Gordon Liu, and Jackie Chan, and why Lau Kar-leung has been hailed as the grandmaster of kung fu films.

Neuropolitics

Does measuring people’s spontaneous reactions to a TV ad or a stump speech tell you how they will ultimately vote, however? “On the applied side, it’s pretty unclear, the hype from the reality. It’s easy to over-believe the ability of these tools.” So far cognitive tests have had mixed results. Contrasting studies have shown that implicit attitudes both do and don’t predict how people vote. Democracy assumes the presence of rational actors, capable of digesting information from all quarters and coming to reasoned conclusions. If neuroconsultants are even 50% as good as they claim at probing people’s innermost thoughts and shifting their voting intentions, it calls that assumption into question.

Miso Robotics

Flippy is the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant that can learn from its surroundings and acquire new skills over time. Flippy is portable, collaborative, adaptable + designed for working kitchens. Flippy is designed to operate in an existing commercial kitchen layout and serve along with kitchen staff to safely and efficiently complete cooking tasks.

Solar System Destinations

Poor old Europa isn’t out to kill you, per se. It’s a big oceanic world, after all, just waiting for us to find life. It seems to have all the right ingredients for it hiding under a thick ice shelf.

The problem comes in when you consider Europa’s location: firmly within the radiation belts of Jupiter. Io and Europa are bombarded with lethal amounts of radiation. The future Europa Clipper mission even avoids orbiting Europa directly to lengthen the craft’s lifetime. If you landed Europa’s surface, the radiation dose would kill you—and anything else—within days.